Misosfelis
by galaxyostars
Summary: Dante gets stuck with a cat he tries to offload onto others, until Vergil realises that the cat is not your typical cat.
1. Chapter 1

Context: I was employed to house-sit for three weeks, looking after two evil ponies that wanted to kill me and a cat that was slowly driving me insane. And what does a writer do when they're slowly being tortured? Correct, class; they write it down and make themselves feel better.

This is the result.

* * *

A British short-hair cat was pushed into his face. It had a white chest, it's back peppered with black to brown, and its face typical of your standard feline companion. Nothing else would have been notable, save for the white patch of fur on its left hind leg—more indicative of a scar, rather than any genetic trait of its coat.

"It's a cat," Dante said with considerable stoicism, leaning his face away from the pet as his blue eyes stared directly at its would-be owner.

"It's a _demon _cat, I tell you! A _demon_!"

The cat's small mouth opened to release an adorable '_mrwow'_.

Dante rose a sceptical eyebrow. He'd seen 'demon felines' before; this cat was not one of them. Demons had a distinct... _smell_ to them. A feeling that tingled the very back of his nose. This man attempting to sell him on the idea that the cat was anything other than a tabby British short-haired cat was ill or truly and utterly insane. Maybe both.

"It's a _cat_," repeated Dante, taking the poor feline out from the desperate man's hands and letting it drop onto his desk. "What makes you think it's anything other than your stock-standard pet? Look at it—it's regular!"

The tabby was proceeding to lick at its fur, and it's at this point Dante noted that the left hind leg was indeed scarred because of injury, its left foot sticking further ahead of its other paws as it remained seated. Probably a tendon issue or something.

But his new 'customer' was frantic. "Please, Mister Redgrave, you _have to believe me_! That thing is _evil_!"

The devil hunter sighed, sitting his head atop his hand as he leaned up against his desk. When he returned from hell, he hadn't imagined his first job back being some random freaking out about his cat. "What's its name?"

"Wattle. His name's Wattle."

"You named your cat _Wattle_?" Dante scoffed. "No wonder it's evil."

"Mister Redgrave, I'm being _serious_-_"_

The totally ordinary cat chose that moment stand and wander around the top of Dante's desk. It rubbed up against the devil hunter's forearm—but its purr provoked a curious reaction from its owner.

The man shrieked in fear, and raced out of Dante's shop, leaving nothing but a trail of dust and a cat in his wake. Dante huffed in apathy and turned to the cat.

"Don't tell me," he sighed, "you're actually a devil?"

Wattle the cat blinked owlishly at him. Dante nodded to himself. "Yep, I thought not."

* * *

"That is one loud meow."

Dante poked his head out from the kitchen area. Lady was caught standing in the middle of the office, gingerly trying to manoeuvre her legs around Wattle as the cat continuously brushed up against her boots. "I see you've met Wattle."

Lady took a large step over the cat, quickly pacing over to Dante and standing behind him. She held an apprehensive look on her face, turning her nose up from the cat and pointing it to the devil hunter. "You named your cat 'Wattle'?"

"It's not mine. It belongs to a client," Dante rubbed at his neck. "Except he hasn't come back to pick him up yet."

"Pretty sure that means 'Wattle' is now _your_ problem."

"Not for long. I'm hoping you'll take him."

The glare she gave him in return could have killed him. His back pressed up against the kitchen bench as Lady stood toe-to-toe with him. "Are you saying _I_ need a _cat_?"

"I think you're reading too much into my offer," he said with his hands raised in surrender. "I just want him off my hands."

At their feet, the cat jumped up and rubbed itself on Dante's leg, it's purring loud and incessant as it demanded the two hunters' attention. Lady's eyes widened at the movement, prompting her to pull away from Dante and scrunch her nose.

He rose an eyebrow at this, a slight grin pulling at his lips. "You're not... _afraid_ of _Wattle_... are you?"

Blue and brown eyes shot back up to him, her arms crossing over her chest, responding with a snippy, "He's leaving fur all over the place."

"_You're afraid of _cats_!?_" Dante exclaimed with a laugh. "Of _all the things_ we've come across in the last twenty years, and a _cat_ has you freaked out?"

She shook her head in resignation and began to walk out. "Good luck with your cat problem, Dante."

* * *

"_No._"

Dante's shoulders slumped a little, and he was forced to gingerly push the cat away from the receiver. "C'mon, Nero! It's only a little _cat-_"

"_We're not taking your stupid cat, Dante. Julio is deadly allergic to those things! I bring that thing home, and we'd have to decontaminate whatever it touches before Julio can get within five feet of anything!_"

As Dante frowned just as someone else (probably Kyrie) on the other end of the phone line spoke quietly to Nero, prompting a '_yeah but he doesn't need to know that!'_ from his nephew. The older man rolled his eyes, again ushering the cat away from the receiver. "It's only until I can get it re-homed," he offered. "Think of it like foster care or something! Maybe Nico-"

"_We're _not taking your cat_, Dante,_" Nero stated again. "_Ask Vergil."_

With that, Dante was forced to hang up on his nephew with a disappointed sigh. The cat made it's soft-padded way back over to the receiver when he wasn't looking, rubbing its face up against the phone and knocking it off its hook. Not the first time it's pulled that move, and probably not the last.

Dante frowned at him and began to consider ways to keep Wattle off his desk.

* * *

"_Remind me how you acquired this number_?" growled his drowsy twin brother down the other end of the line.

"Just because you're in France, doesn't mean you're untraceable," Dante said over the loud '_mrrrrwooow'_ of the cat seated on his desk.

Nero demanded it from Vergil, and Dante demanded it from Nero. He wouldn't have needed it for any other reason, but the cat was... becoming more intolerable the longer it remained here in Devil May Cry. It'd been a week, and it hadn't stopped making noise.

Any time Dante gets up from his chair? _Mrwooow!_

A minute after Dante feeds it? _Mrrrrwoaw!_

Any time Dante falls asleep? _Mrrwoaoww _*snuggle snuggle*.

It'd have been cute if it wasn't so goddamn frequent. Or loud.

It definitely wasn't hungry, since he'd taken up feeding it the night its owner left it behind. Kyrie had suggested that it might be lonely, though Dante didn't see how that could have been the case since it'd been following him around the shop without pause for over a week. He'd tried locking it in his kitchen for an hour, just to get some peace and maybe allow the cat some time to develop some independence, but it mysteriously re-appeared on his desk after just ten minutes. He'd have to find the hole it must have crawled through later.

"_Dante, it is _two in the morning_,_" Vergil snapped at him. "_And what in the Underworld is that noise?!_"

_Mrrrrrrwwooooawww!_

"The meowing?" Dante said. "It's a cat! And it's a cat I'm really hoping you'll take off my hands."

"_And why would I have any use for a cat?"_

"Because you live in _France_, and you're probably in desperate need of companionship- okay, kitty? Seriously, be quiet now," he snapped at the cat, frowning at it from his place in his chair. He huffed and returned to what he was saying. "A client dropped it by, freaking out about how it's a demon or something—it's not—and left without taking the damn thing with him."

Vergil grumbled at the story. "_Then put it out on the street and be done with it."_

The cat rubbed up against his feet in their position on the desk with an animated _merrrrrwoahow._

"Jesus, Vergil, Amboise was supposed to put some heart back in you, not make you cruel to cats."

"_I'm hanging up now._"

And just like that, the line disconnected. Dante groaned, tossing the phone back onto the receiver.

The cat meowed again, causing him to cringe and flatten his hands against his face.

But the phone rang again. A glimmer of hope fell into Dante's eyes—maybe a client needed him? Maybe he had a reason to leave the cat behind in Devil May Cry and disappear for a night or so? Could it be that some poor person in harm's way was his salvation from the torture of felis catus!?

"Devil May Cry-"

"_Did you say you had a client hysterical about a cat?_" Vergil's voice hurriedly snapped into his ear, forgoing any pleasantries.

Well, so much for salvation from torture. Dante groaned again, "It was just some poor man having a rough time who clearly didn't have the capacity to look after his cat-"

"_Do not move and do not interact with that cat. Do nothing until I arrive._"

The line disconnected again, leaving a very confused Dante alone with a loud, very oblivious-to-Dante's-pain cat. The devil hunter dropped the phone back onto its hook, eying the cat warily.


	2. Chapter 2

He was stylishly shocked out of his chair when Vergil arrived through a portal created by Yamato. He'd come off the side of the chair, quickly recovering with a roll into a crouch, Ebony and Ivory pointed at his twin brother.

When he realised the threat was only Vergil (standing straight in a crisp tailored Vergil-esq suit, but with dark rings under his eyes), Dante gave a relieved sigh. "Why doesn't anyone ever _knock_ anymore?"

"Where is the cat?"

Dante blinked, wiping the sleep away from his eyes as the cat strode in with a cry of _mraawwhah_, glancing between Dante and Vergil.

Vergil's response to this? As he would respond to anything that looks at him the wrong way, the son of Sparda reacted by holding out the Yamato, preparing to unleash it.

Dante dove in front of the cat before it met Vergil's wrath. "Whoa there! Just hold on a second—it's a _cat_, Vergil!"

"It is not _just_ a cat," Vergil snapped. "It is a _misosfelis_."

"'Misos-felis'? I think you mean _misanthrope_—which is _you_, not the cat!"

Vergil whipped Yamato out from its sheath and pointed at the feline sitting without a care behind Dante's foot. "Dante, that is a dangerous fiend of the underworld, designed to torture souls for eternity."

Dante would have laughed at the absurdity of Vergil's statement, had he not understood the look in Vergil's eyes—one of distinct familiarity, disgust of a time when he was under Mundus' control. Both brothers had spent time in Hell (it was part of the job description at this point), but Vergil had a more intimate knowledge of the dangers that lurked. He knew them significantly more intimately than Dante ever cared to imagine.

"Okay," he nodded, eyes glancing down at Wattle as his body seized up, refusing to move an inch or startle the cat. "So... what, do we vanquish it or something?"

"We put it back where it came from, before it causes catastrophe." Satisfied that Dante would no longer protect the cat, Vergil lowered the Yamato once more. "Who did you try to offload it onto?"

"Only our little gang of hunters."

A dark frown fell across Vergil's eyes. "You tried to give this misosfelis to Nero?"

"Yeah, but it didn't go past the phone call—one of their kids is allergic to cats."

If he didn't know any better, he'd have thought Vergil's short outtake of breath was relief. "No one else has touched this cat?"

"It rubbed up against Lady's boots, but I don't think she held it?" Dante offered.

"So only you have touched it?"

"Aside from the client that came in."

"They're a lost cause," Vergil muttered, frowning down at Wattle as the cat starting meowing again. "Pick it up. I will make passage to the underworld."

Very, very carefully, Dante picked Wattle up under his middle as Vergil sliced through the air, right here in the middle of Devil May Cry. Nevermind that doing so (especially to the underworld) meant that their promise to Nero to not go back to the underworld was now effectively broken, but according to Vergil, this was a life-or-death situation, right?

Except, Dante had noticed nothing particularly life-or-death-like about this cat.

As they stepped through the warm and stuffy clearing of Hell, Dante opened this line of questioning to Vergil. "What's so bad about a misosfelis?"

"They pester endlessly and drive whoever so touches them to insanity."

"Oh," Dante held Wattle further away from his body. "So what's the plan, just gonna leave kitty here in Hell or..."

Vergil stopped Dante's progress with the hilt of the Yamato, staring down at a stump in the ground. He gestured for Dante to place the cat down—and Wattle was fine with this, his incessant vocalisations finally ceasing.

Suddenly, the stump opened into a dark void, and Wattle instantly fell into it, dropping like a stone from a great height.

Vergil straightened again, turning away from the stump without a second glance and beginning his march back to the open portal, while Dante stood there with a flabbergasted look on his face.

"But- what-" he stammered, "don't tell me we just- we didn't just-"

_They didn't just kill a cat did they?_

"The misosfelis cannot be killed without the death of their current or previous targets—we merely returned this one to its place of origin."

"_It fell down a hole, Vergil!_"

"It was a demon's pet. It will be fine."

Dante jogged to catch up with him. "I can't believe you made us drop a cat down a hole-"

Both brothers were stopped in their tracks by the appearance of a British short-hair cat with a white chest, a black to brown peppered back, and a white patch of fur on its left hind leg hiding what was most likely a scar from a tendon injury. It sat precariously in front of the portal, rear left leg sticking out further than the other three likely because of the aforementioned injury, blocking the men exit.

Its yellow eyes stared eerily at the brothers.

"That's... that's the cat, isn't it?"

Vergil's eyes narrowed. "Yes."

Silence.

"You called it a demon's pet," said Dante.

"Yes."

"...so where's its master?"

A deep, rumbling growl could be heard behind them. Slowly, the two sons of Sparda turned from Wattle, blue eyes meeting the sight of what might have passed for a lumpy, house-sized ogre. As Vergil unsheathed Yamato, Dante summoned his sword to his hand, swinging it in preparation.

"The next time you're given an animal," Vergil seethed, "do not call _me_."

"Yeah, I think that's fair."


End file.
